Greetings friends! I'm here to layout my version of Heroic Raids that would help add new content and prevent an older server from becoming stale in regards to PvE.

PLEASE read through before you start hitting me with #NOCHANGES!!! This does not change the game we know and love, but help continue the game we know without adding new expansions.

HEROIC RAIDS
I think adding a Heroic Difficulty for raids could be pretty neat if it's implemented properly. However, there would have to be some changes to the Heroic Systems we have known in the past. A guild cannot simply enter a heroic version of a raid just because the beat the normal version of it. Heroic Raids would be exclusive to 40 man raids, not 20 mans.

HEROIC ATTUNMENT
In order for Heroic Raids to work within the authentic nature of Vanilla Wow, there would have to be a "Guild Attunement" and an individual "Character Attunements".

CHARACTER ATTUNMENTS
I think a character attunement would involve some sort of quest for each heroic raid attunement. I think the quest should be slightly different based on your race/class, this way the entire guild can't complete the character portions of the attunements in one go. Think of these quests in the same matter as the Scarab Lord quest in terms of length and difficulty. Nobody will be completing this quest in a day, a week, or even a month. At the end of the quest, you would gain a Class Specific Epic Weapon, Neckpiece, ring, whatever etc. and attunement to the Raid you are attuning for. You would be able to start this quest when you kill the final boss in the previous raid. i.e. Kel'Thuzad would drop the starting quest item (lootable by everyone that night) to start the Heroic Molten Core attunement chain. Heroic Ragnaros would drop the starting quest for Heroic BWL, HC'Thun->HNaxx.

GUILD ATTUNEMENTS
As for the Guild Attunement to a Heroic Raid, you can't just beat the final boss from the original raid. You would have to complete the entire raid in a single night on a timer without changing the makeup of your raid and having zero wipes. If you manage to do this, your guild earns the attunement. The Guild itself (guild ID) would now be eligible to start a Heroic Raid, however only attuned characters could enter. In addition, the difficulty of the raid and the itemization of the loot would need to be slightly better than the previous raid. So Heroic Molten Core would be a .5 upgrade in terms of itemization to Naxx gear. HMC -> HBWL ->HAQ40 - >HNaxx. lastly, the boss encounter abilities and strategies would change to give the players something new to look forward to. This could also introduce heroic versions of the raids tier sets that will help you stand apart from a standard raider.

NEW CONTENT
Only after a guild completes all standard Vanilla WoW 40 man raids on Heroic do they unlock a brand new unreleased raid based in the old world. i.e. Grim Batol, Hyjal, Uldum, whatever, etc. These raids themselves would be considered Tier 2 Raids and once the final raid is completed, they too would unlock Heroic Versions of themselves.

Alternatively, you could say each new raid is opened up by completing a tied Heroic Raid. For example, when you kill Herioc Ragnaros, you are eligible for the Uldum raid. When you defeat the Uldum raid, you are eligible for Heroic BWL, when you defeat HBWL, you are eligible for Grim Batol, etc. etc. Just an alternative.

I think this system will stop guilds from getting bored and would really add an "elite" mode to the game that Vanilla used to have. You know if you see people in Grim Batol+ gear, they're truly the best of the best.

I appreciate the enthusiasm here but I'm not personally a fan. It will be a challenge enough for like 90% of people to complete all the 40 mans.

Classic should be timeless. It should have a ceiling. Classic should never make you feel like you have just achieved something great and then hit you with more stuff you have to do.

Iced_Plasma wrote: ↑

5 years ago

I appreciate the enthusiasm here but I'm not personally a fan. It will be a challenge enough for like 90% of people to complete all the 40 mans.

Classic should be timeless.

I appreciate your opinion on the subject. However, I will have to disagree with you as well. I don't personally feel that Classic needs to have a ceiling. It's an MMORPG and you aren't supposed to be able to "beat" an MMO; at least not permanently. Perhaps for a while, you and your guild will be #1, but there is always new content in EVERY MMO. Guilds rise, guilds fall. Nothing is forever.

The great thing about vanilla wow is that not everyone COULD do everything, which is what gave it so much magic and character. You see, this is the issue with retail, they've adapted to the players instead of making the players adapt to the game. Not every player has to achieve everything, but if they want to, the opportunity is there.

Iced_Plasma wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Classic should never make you feel like you have just achieved something great and then hit you with more stuff you have to do.

I 100% disagree with this. A true MMORPG should not have a ceiling and a player should never feel as if they have "beat the game". I don't look at this as "more stuff you have to do", but rather a way to further your adventure on your character.


Again, thanks for the input and this is really just a suggestion in the event that they do add heroics. That's all.

Raids or Dungeons should not have different difficulty tiers. It automatically devalues every tier that is not the highest. It also accelerates gear inflation.

I also disagree with your stance on indefinite content. You cant add new content without either
a) spreading the people between different content
b) devaluing existing content
c) replacing previous content
For all of these 3 it would be easy to find numerous examples from retail, if requested.

The only logical conclusion, at least from my perspective, is that eventually you reach a point when adding new content is not adding to the games health. I dont think Classic/Vanilla reached that point, but I just wanted to address this sentiment. At the end of the day its up to the players to keep the game interesting.

You either do or do not. There should never be tiers. Difficulty modes are (a part) what got us all to this point in WoW. The raids are hard for a reason and the gear you get from them separates you from the casual players for a reason. It's a system that rewards those who chose to make raiding a priority in game and, for some, in life.
The opportunity is there for all players to take but it's up to the player to make the effort to be prepared for such a raid. Folks often confuse an opportunity with a handout.

While you had a well thought out argument; I'm going to have to disagree.

Vanilla raiding was a challenge, just getting attuned was a task in and of itself. The task of getting 40 people in tune to tackle the raids was nothing short of heroic. (The term herding cats...comes to mind.)

We have too much catering to all of the different "social classes" in wow as it is. Its fragmented the community and made itemization a nightmare.

Vanilla was great, it was binary. You raided or you didn't. You PVP'd or you didn't. The do or do-not aspect of the game really drove it and kept it going.

Dont really know how else to put it. I'm not a #NoChanges purist, but I think we should leave some major changes out of Classic.

I can understand the case for heroic versions of dungeons, because running only Blackrock Depths and Blackrock Spire over and over and over again for gear to enter Molten Core is REAAAALLLY tedious. But no on heroic raids. In classic, raiding IS the heroic difficulty setting.

Oh well, I tried. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

couchatron wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Oh well, I tried. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Interesting idea, but #NOCHANGES runs too deep. I am really curious how they handle the game once Naxx has been on farm status for a long time. I doubt Blizzard will just leave it alone.

TBC servers are my guess. Classic+ is also an option, but less likely.

Or maybe they wait for the playerbase to shrink enough to proclaim "interest isnt high enough, we told ya".

Samaraner wrote: ↑

5 years ago

TBC servers are my guess. Classic+ is also an option, but less likely.

Or maybe they wait for the playerbase to shrink enough to proclaim "interest isnt high enough, we told ya".

They will go the route of private servers and build #FRESH

In the end the biggest problem will always be the loot. Is it to weak guilds would not do it. If it is to strong you will break the game.

couchatron wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Oh well, I tried. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You put up a valid argument, don't beat yourself up.

I think biggest problem is having 40+ awake and prepared people at same time is big challenge those days. Back in vanilla most of players were very new to the MMOs they wanted to explore this kind of games. Most of active people interested in Classic are adults now and have much less time than back then (familly, job, social life). For international guilds or groups pugging a raid group could be more or less trivial but if you want to play with people from your nation (like myself) having a raider roster will be difficoult. We have to keep in mind this whole HC Raid concept is not original part of Vanilla and have downsides like somebody have said here. From Mythic raider in retail I have to say that having too much copies of same content with only higher difficoulty devalue accoplishment in first place.

If there had to be another tier it should be something new, maybe a prestige difficulty where you get the same loot but it's way harder.

Question: why would you do this? Because it's prestigious. People love being the best, and sometimes it's not about the material rewards but the reputation behind completing something hard that matters. And if there had to drop anything it should be the same rewards (maybe recolor?) But I'm personally not sure, just woke up so don't know where this idea is going right now.

You have made a terrible case. I'm thankful that this will obviously not be implemented.

Difficulty tiers removed exclusive content. Naxx is Naxx. You can either do it, or you can not. There is no easy, medium and hard version of Naxx, with various colors of the same gear... You can either do it, or you can not. The tiers themselves provide a difficulty hierarchy for players. Some players will level. In leveling they will gain "experience" points to gain levels while simultaneously gaining actual experience playing the game. At 60 players can find a small group of friends and enter a dungeon against elite monsters... Tier 1... Tier 2... and so on. We already have a tiered system of difficulty. If everyone clears Naxx and we are bored, we could make a case for adding a new level of difficulty after Naxx. New difficulty in the form of horizontal content. If your goal here is to preserve Classics relevance by increasing the difficulty of the game, you should simply be advocating for higher difficulty, which I could actually get behind. I am not #nochanges. I am absolutely for an increase in general difficulty to the game. Everything should be tuned to be a bit more challenging to accommodate for player knowledge and modern PCs. A power increase of about 10-15% could do the game wonders. Adding a variety of difficulties to the content undermines the entire point of having a tiered system of content. Adding multiple variances of the same items completely undermines loot identity... "Is that ThunderFury the raid finder, the normal, the heroic, the mythic version, the 10 man version, the 12 man version, the 13 man version...??? I cant tell by looking." Another glaring concern I would have would be the rate at which guilds were gearing... Lets not beat around the bush, Vanilla is mechanically easy. It is widely accepted that the challenge to a 40 man raid isnt the content, rather recruiting and managing a team of more than 40 players. Part of this challenge is loot distribution... Players can go a LONG time without seeing gear. Add in 2 difficulties, even if one was gated behind the first full clear, and you would be seeing players gear twice as fast!

Stfuppercut hurry up and register an account

I agree with your post, I want to show my support with a 'like' damn it!

can we finally force Stfuppercut to make an account because i would like every post ;)

Iced_Plasma wrote: ↑

5 years ago

I appreciate the enthusiasm here but I'm not personally a fan. It will be a challenge enough for like 90% of people to complete all the 40 mans.

Classic should be timeless. It should have a ceiling. Classic should never make you feel like you have just achieved something great and then hit you with more stuff you have to do.

Same, but image we play classic the next 4 years and at some point everyone burned and bored out. It would be cool if they add old originally planned classic content.

I feel like heroic dungeons would be a much better approach. A tight knit guild group of five people in their BWL gear STRUGGLING through a highly tuned BRD sounds incredibly appealing to me.

But what would be the reward? I agree that injecting better gear or new tiers could lead to gear inflation. Maybe same loot from bosses but chance of cosmetic items / higher droprates of rare materials.
Example: Heroic Startholme would have higher Righteous Orb droprates, maybe higher epic item dropchances, bosses have low chance of dropping cosmetic items ala TCG. BRD heroic could have later bosses have low chance of dropping Sulfuron Ingots etc.

Even if you skip all the rewards I would still love to do the classic 60 dungeons in heroic mode.

couchatron wrote: ↑

5 years ago

PLEASE read through before you start hitting me with #NOCHANGES!!!

Nope, no thanks. If there's a heroic mode, then there's more/better gear there. More or better gear has the potential of upsetting the balance of classes already in the game, invalidating previous dungeon/raiding content and open a new can of nasties. The point of the game wasn't to provide continuous alternate/parallel timeline/universe entertainment, but to recreate patch 1.12.

Only very naive people think the game is going to end once you clear Naxx 2-3 years from now because there's plenty of other things to do. Anyone who believes in increased difficulties or new content added to the game can go to private servers which already do that.

I'm not interested in any other additional content.

The atmosphere will get stale in time like any expansions, but I am hopeful that means new expansion releases like TBC Classic where you can shift/transfer your Classic character to.

Once all the expansions are in place, hopeful they create something like a seasonal experience.

Isn't this what ruined the game?
next you'll be asking for +10 keystone difficulty or whatever that is.

This honestly isn't a terrible idea, however it just won't work with Classic WoW by nature of the game it IS finished and has been for a long time now. Maybe if Blizzard goes down the line of Classic + with slowly releasing new raids they could do a new questline where someone takes of the Molten Core since Rag died (which would be a brand new raid in an old setting, new entrance etc, with similar gear aesthetics). But doing a heroic difficulty wouldn't be accepted by the community imo